Industry patterns · Government and councils
An accessible grants portal: applicants apply and acquit online, assessors score with conflict checks, and decisions flow to finance and records.
A reference architecture from EITSAA, not a named client system. Service limits, prices and product features change, so confirm current details before you commit to a design.
An applicant reads the round guidelines, runs a short eligibility self-check and starts an application they can save and return to. Forms meet WCAG 2.2 AA and work on a phone.
Submissions pass the edge, WAF and rate limits to the API. Applicants sign in with Cognito so they can track progress, answer questions and later report on milestones.
Quotes, budgets and letters of support upload straight to S3 with presigned URLs and are scanned for malware before any officer opens them.
On submission, a Step Functions workflow runs the round's eligibility rules, flags missing items and sends an acknowledgement with a reference number.
The application, its answers, versions and every status change are stored in Aurora PostgreSQL, so the record of what was submitted and when cannot drift.
Assessors and panel members sign in with staff SSO, declare conflicts of interest, then score against the published criteria. Moderation and the delegate's decision are recorded with reasons.
An approved grant raises a funding agreement and a payment request in the finance system, and the application and decision are filed as official records. Acquittal reports come back through the same portal.
| Component | What it does | Why this choice |
|---|---|---|
| CloudFront and AWS WAF | Public edge for the portal. | Absorbs the rush when a round opens and blocks scripted abuse. |
| Amazon Cognito | Applicant accounts, with optional MFA. | Applicants return for variations, milestones and acquittals. |
| API Gateway and Lambda | Application API. | Low cost between rounds, scales on closing day. |
| AWS Step Functions | Round workflow from eligibility to acquittal. | Every application has a visible state and history. |
| Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | Applications, scores, conflicts and milestones. | Relational data and reporting across rounds. |
| Amazon S3 with malware scanning | Attachments and generated agreements. | Encrypted, versioned and scanned. |
| Staff identity (Entra ID or council IdP) | Assessor and delegate sign-in. | Joiners and leavers handled in one place. |
| Integration to finance and records | Payments, supplier set-up and records capture. | Finance and the EDRMS stay authoritative. |
Configure, buy or build
Why. Grants products cover common rounds well.
Trade-off. A custom portal needs an owner and ongoing support.
Scoring and decisions
Why. Funding decisions must be explainable and accountable.
Trade-off. Assessor effort stays.
Conflicts of interest
Why. Probity is the first thing reviewed after a round.
Trade-off. An extra step for panels.
Payments
Why. Finance controls and fraud checks stay in one place.
Trade-off. Integration work with the finance system.
Private networking, IAM Identity Center and Cognito with MFA, encryption with customer-managed keys, least-privilege roles and WAF on the public edge.
Multi-AZ services, backups with tested restores and queue-based retries for integrations.
Edge caching for public content, asynchronous processing for anything slow and indexes tuned to the main queries.
Scale with demand, use reservations or savings plans for the steady baseline and set budgets and alerts per environment.
Infrastructure as code, pipeline deployments with rollback, dashboards on service-level objectives and runbooks for the top failure modes.
Right-size, schedule down non-production and archive data to colder tiers on a retention schedule.
VPC with public, private and isolated data subnets and VPC endpoints. Public ingress only through the edge service with WAF. Private connectivity to on-premises or partner systems by VPN or dedicated link.
Applicants via Cognito with optional MFA and verified contact details. Assessors, panel members and delegates via the agency or council IdP with MFA, limited to the rounds and applications assigned to them.
Applications hold personal, business and sometimes financial information. Collect only what the round needs, encrypt with KMS, keep data in the Sydney region, log every view of an application and set retention from the disposal schedule that covers grants.
| Control | How this design addresses it |
|---|---|
| Multi-factor authentication | Required for staff and administrators. Essential Eight. |
| Restrict administrative privileges | Just-in-time elevation and separate admin accounts. Essential Eight. |
| Regular backups | Automated backups with a copy held outside the workload account or subscription. Essential Eight. |
| Privacy and security of personal information | Encryption, access logging and retention support APP 11. |
| Logging | Central, tamper-resistant logs support ISM event logging guidance and ISMF expectations. |
Mappings show how the design supports each control. They are not certifications, and EITSAA does not claim IRAP assessment or compliance for any reference architecture.
| Failure mode | Mitigation |
|---|---|
| Closing-day surge | Serverless scaling, a load test at the expected peak and a published rule for extensions if the portal is unavailable. |
| Bank detail change fraud | Verify changes through a known phone number before payment and alert on recent changes. |
| Conflict found after scoring | Conflict register, access logs and re-assessment of the affected applications. |
| Finance or records system down | Queue payment requests and records captures, with retries and daily reconciliation. |
Compute, database, data transfer and licences for any SaaS components.
Health
Structured digital referrals into a clinical service, with consent, secure messaging and clinical system integration, hosted in Australia with strong audit.
Education
One front door for enrolment, support requests and communications, integrated with the student information system and learning platform, with safeguarding built in.
Not-for-profit
Case notes, referrals and outcomes tracked securely by small teams, with funder reporting generated from the same data and strict access to sensitive client information.
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